


One Hand Washes the Other Washes the Other

by whitachi



Category: Psychonauts
Genre: Gen, Obsessive-Compulsive, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 14:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitachi/pseuds/whitachi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raz meets up with Sasha down the line for a little housecleaning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Hand Washes the Other Washes the Other

Honestly, while it was one of the coolest things he could do, Raz was not overly fond of teleportation; the whole process left him feeling like he might have air bubbles between his molecules, like a really widespread case of unfortunate gas. But the feeling of his feet rematerializing on solid ground in exactly the right spot always gave him a bit of a happy. As his eyeballs reformed, he caught the eye of Mort (owner and operator of Mort's Cerebellum, est. 1793, finest of Psychonaut favorite hangouts) and gave him a nod and a salute with his index finger (as soon as it was corporeal again.) 

"Be the usual for you, Mr. Razputin?" said Mort, whose hands shook badly enough that any glass he picked up would have its contents on the floor before he could deliver it to a patron. It was just as well, as he was far better at mixing with his mind. 

Raz pulled up a seat at the bar and grinned. "Been a good week, Mort, so let's make it something special." He rubbed his palms together vigorously as he looked up at the menu of Specialties of the House. He'd tried the TK La Sunrise on his eighteenth birthday, and that had been once more than enough, and the Pyrotini had singed his eyebrows. "Lemme go for the Pineal Colada." 

"Fine choice," came a low and _familiar_ voice from about two seats to the left. Raz turned to see just who it belonged to. 

"Hey!" He hadn't seen Sasha Nein in at least two years, maybe more. Had it been the incident with the President in El Salvador? No, it had definitely been at Krakatoa, and if you wanted to talk about singed eyebrows... Raz had been keeping himself pretty busy in Atlantis since then, and Sasha was assigned to the satellite, last he heard. "Long time no see! How've you been?" 

Sasha looked the same as usual, all dark colors and sunglasses indoors. The straw in his drink swirled itself in a steady counterclockwise motion, kicking up bubbles with each rotation, as Sasha kept his gloved hands folded on the bar. "I am the same as always, Razputin." 

"Huh, well, that's cool." He glanced a little around Mort's; maybe it was just the time difference, but the place seemed a little deserted. Sasha looked like he had been here long enough to start developing a layer of dust, though. "Hey, where's Milla?" 

One of Sasha's thin eyebrows arched over his tinted glasses. "Where's Lili?" 

Raz scowled a little and brought his freshly mixed drink into sipping distance with a tug of his mind. "Touche." Mort had definitely not lost his touch at all, and Raz had slurped up a third of his drink before the brain freeze set in. Oh yeah. It was good stuff. 

Sasha's drink had emptied itself when Raz wasn't looking, and Mort managed to refill it in a blink's span, too. "So," Raz opened and closed the little paper umbrella in his drink a few times as he watched the level in Sasha's glass slowly decrease. "I've heard they've been doing some really cool stuff with crystal harmonics up on the satellite. Have you seen any more of the Venu--" 

"I am no longer assigned there, Razputin," Sasha said, and lifted one hand to brush his hair away from his brow. It immediately fell back into the same place. "I am no longer assigned anywhere." He actually picked up his glass for a moment, then wrinkled his nose and pulled it away. "I am on, as they say, permanant hiatus." 

Raz sucked in a breath. "Ouch." A couple of good Psychonauts had been put on permanant hiatus a year or so ago, after what people just liked to call the Baggage Claim Incident. But Sasha hadn't been involved in that as far as Raz had heard, and his lack of gibbering and drooling further confirmed this. "What happened?" 

"Nothing--" Sasha's voice started off loud, and then he turned his head away to cough faintly and adjusted his glasses. "Nothing has happened. The administration has just decided that my psyche is no longer in a fit enough state to withstand the rigors of active duty." 

Raz let his umbrella flutter away. "So?" He couldn't see Sasha's eyes from beind his glasses, but he could feel the scowl start to make his eyebrows smoke. "I mean, what I mean to say is, go get yourself straightened out. Dust out the cobwebs, fold the laundry, you know." He leaned in with a little conspiratorial wink. "I mean, I don't have to tell you that it's something a child can do." 

" _No_ , Razputin, this is not something you are required to tell me. However, the administration and I do not see eye to eye on the matter. I believe that I am fine. My neuroses are my own and are perfectly under control." 

Raz leaned back a little to squint at Sasha. "Got something on your jacket there, Sasha." 

Sasha immediately sprung into action, brushing desperately at his coat with both hands and hissing obscenities. When he was finished, a faint rise of pyrokinetic smoke came from his lapels. Raz crossed his arms in satisfaction. 

"Mm-hmm. Under control." 

Sasha tugged his clothing back into perfect unwrinkled order and returned to stirring his drink. "I suppose you believe you have made a point." 

"Let me help you!" Raz declared, spreading his hands out and knocking the straw out of his own drink. His umbrella returned to its roost in the middle of a pinapple ring. "Come on, Sasha, it's what I do. You know I'm the best there is at manual mental disimpaction." The swizzle stick in Sasha's drink stopped its rotation. "You wouldn't even have to tell anyone it was me. Just consider it a favor for all the help you've given me in the past." 

Sasha was staring at Mort, who had some bottles raised in mid-refill. The old man lifted his shaking hands into the air. "Mort didn't hear a dang thing," he said, and filled Sasha's glass. 

Raz hopped over a few seats to lean in close to Sasha, and started to bring a hand to pat Sasha on the shoulder, but that came to a stop about an inch away from him as Sasha raised his shield. "And hey, if I can get you back to fighting shape, it looks like we both need a new partner, right? Come on, what's the worst that could happen?" 

Sasha actually picked up his glass, holding it up to the light for a second. "I do not believe you want an answer to that, Razputin." 

"Yeah, I guess you're probably right, Sasha," Raz said with an exaggerated sigh as he reached into his pocket for the Psycho-Portal he kept for occasions such as these. "I mean, your mind is your mind, and it wouldn't be right for me to go--THINK FAST!" He flicked the Portal at Sasha, and it landed with a satisfying _thwock_ in the center of his forehead. The door creaked open. Raz slipped on his goggles and went to work. 

Admittedly, it'd been a good long number of years since the last time he'd been in Sasha's brain, but he could tell the guy had done some redecorating. The color scheme was still classic monocromatic neutrals, but he'd gotten a little more... organized. Dangerously organized. The infinite cube of Sasha's psyche was no longer lain out in black and white, but rather in interlocking containers of brushed steel and plastic, each with its own intricate lock. Some seemed to hold nothing more than the harmless shadows of figments, but some held more solid things. That large one was filled to the brim with censors, all shrieking and thumping cancellations against the barrier; that one seemed to be filled with Hawaiian shirts; a small one just beneath Raz's feet held only faded photographs of one woman, over and over again. Raz tapped a little at one just beside him, and watched the small kitten inside grow ferocious teeth and snap upwards at him. 

He looked up at Sasha with a raised eyebrow. "Has anyone ever told you you have... issues?" 

Sasha merely sighed and pinched his the bridge of his nose as, from the white emptiness on either side of them came row after row of magazine rack, surrounding them. Raz perused the titles as they flew past ("Mutter and Murmur: A Journal of Oedpial Concerns," "Cleanliness Quarterly," "Cleanliness Monthly," "Cleanilness Weekly," "The Daily Clean") and when the racks finally stopped sailing past and snapped into place, picked up one of at least a hundred versions of the Container Store catalogue and idly thumbed through it as Sasha rubbed at his temples. 

"Yes. They have." 

"Who'd have thought they'd have a store that just sells containers," Raz said to himself, shaking his head as he considered a set of spice jars. 

"Everything needs to have its place," Sasha said almost immediately. "It is important that things be stored and sorted, or else chaos will almost certainly take over." 

Raz returned the catalogue to the rack (and it had to be in the wrong place, as he watched Sasha's knees buckle a little) and made a little shooing gesture to send the issues back to their hiding place. "Well, yeah, it's good to be organized, sure, but what's the point of..." He saw something distressingly familiar in a container just a little ways away. "Of storing everything if you never ever let it out, and is that Milla?" She gave him a coy smile from where she sat delicately in a rather spacious box beneath him, hair tight and perfect in a ponytail, dressed in the (extremely flattering) Psychonauts standard uniform of roughly twenty years ago. It had to be Sasha's memory of her from when they were first partners. In the cell next to her, and not looking nearly as pleased about the situation, was Raz _himself_ , although looking as he did when _he_ first met Sasha. "Well, that's the weirdest thing I've seen this week," Raz said, and knelt down to find the lock. 

"This is highly unnecessary, Razputin," Sasha said, and another box of censors a few meters away let out a chorus of NO NO NOs that could be heard through the thick plastic. "I am perfectly satisfied with my--" 

Raz stood up and put his hands in his pockets, peering out over the cube. It seemed like every box was full as far as he could see. "Pretty good system, I guess," he said, and then looked at Sasha with a little smile. "What're you gonna do when you run out of space?" 

"When I... what?" 

Raz made a sweeping gesture with one hand and tapped a little at the box containing the memory of him as a child with his foot. The little Raz inside aimed a few psychic shots at the lid, leaving scorch marks. "Well, you store everything away and lock it up, right? A place for everything and everything in it's place, sure, but you're going to run out of places before long." 

"Razputin, I am not--" 

Raz dropped back down and tapped at the lock holding back Milla, and started to twist at the pins and tumblers with his mind. "You're going to have to make some space sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner." Before Sasha could object further, the lock was opened and the lid swung free, and the memory of Milla climbed out with what seemed to be the faint soundtrack of conga drums matching her movements. She walked to Sasha, spreading color with her steps, and put a hand on his cheek. Raz saw him flinch, and saw her say something that he could not hear before she faded away, absorbed into him. 

Sasha reeled a little on his feet, but somehow didn't look too much worse for wear. "Now, was that so bad?" Raz said, and snapped his finger. "Let's try a few more." Raz put a hand to his temple and focused his power, unhinging every lock that he could all at once. He was fairly certain he heard Sasha scream, but it was really too late to start complaining now. 

In the aftermath, the sky in Sasha's mind was a lovely twilight violet shade, and Sasha himself lay panting on the ground, dressed in a maroon bowling shirt and wide-wale orange courderoy pants. " _Enough_ ," he gasped as he groped for his glasses, which had become heart-shaped. "...enough for now, Razputin, please." 

Raz brushed his hands together and smiled with the pride of a job well done. "Good enough for now, I suppose." 

He snapped back to his physical body and held out a hand to catch the Psycho-Portal as it detached and fell from Sasha's forehead. Raz pushed his goggles back onto his forehead, holding his hair out of his face, and reached over to finish off the last of his now mostly warm Pineal Colada. 

Sasha himself was not looking particularly damaged by the experience. He took a few deep breathes, then raised a hand to pull one leather glove off his hand. He took off his glasses, and brushed his bare hand over his face with a sigh. "I suppose... that you have a point, Razputin." His eyes were small and tired, and Raz was fairly certain that he had never seen them before in his life. 

Raz reached over to give Sasha's bare hand a light, reassuring little pat. "Just doing my job." 


End file.
